The Deities’ World: Papa Legba: Choosing to Connect (part 4)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
“It will never be easy,” Hekate said, shaking her head. “Being in contact with the people of the worlds I have chosen in the way I regain my energy after using it all to plan out what their next step should be.” She sighed. “The hardest part of being a deity is knowing when you need to stand back and let your people make their own mistakes, even though you know exactly what’s going to happen if they do. Ever since I took on my first race I’ve found that to be something that I wish I didn’t have to do, but we do, because if we spent all of our time guiding them by the hand then they’d never know how to make decisions for themselves and then I’m failing in my duty. Of course there are occasions when my people have hated me for doing that, for not warning them, so I have to explain once more that if I had told them what was going to happen I would have changed the future more than I was comfortable with.
“They know that if I tell them too much then they’re going to react differently. When we first meet that’s something I make certain my people know. I’m careful, most of the time, about who I say what to, but even I make mistakes.” Hekate’s eyes, as she said that, were full of sadness, and I reached out to take her hand, which she seemed grateful for. “You can be like us, if you want to be, but I think you need to be something else. We exist for a reason and so do you. However, Legba, you’re going to have to work out what that reason is, the same way the first deities did, and exactly how you want to fulfil whatever you decide you destiny is.”
I remember telling her then that it was something we’d been talking about. At that time there were ten of us, each one slightly older than the next, and I was the youngest of them. We were certain that it wouldn’t be long before the next of us stepped into their place, so we wanted to be ready for when that happened, although that was something they’d been trying for a while. That was why I thought they weren’t happy to see me to begin with, the disappointment in their eyes, until they explained to me that they were hoping they’d have the answers for my questions.
At the time I did have questions, so I asked them, even though I wasn’t expecting much. Knowing that they were as confused as I was actually helped, because it meant that I wasn’t the only one wondering why it had happened, why I had become… that was the first time I looked at myself and, as I’d just evolved I was naked, found that I was a fully grown male. I wasn’t embarrassed by my nakedness, not at all, even though the others were wearing clothes, because I was strangely happy with what I had become. By then the memories of what I had been were already fading away. I didn’t need them, so I simply didn’t keep them, and it wasn’t until later that I learnt how to use that skill.
We all looked at each other, trying to get a feel for each other, as we conversed. “There are others.” One of the females of the group was more talkative than the rest and I had a feeling that she had been designated the spokesman. “We haven’t spoken to them yet, but we have seen them and we think they’ve seen us.”
“Why haven’t they come to us if they know we’re here?”
“Our belief is that they’re giving us time to settle. The time may come when they chose to visit us, to find out what we are, and we were thinking it might be a better idea if we were to go to them instead. We think it might make them more open to answering our questions, so we can work out if we are like them or not.”
Looking around the group I nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll go.” Silence followed my words. “Obviously once I have some clothes.” I smiled. “I want to do something. I can’t just sit here waiting for them to come to us, or for you to make the decision to go to them, when they might be able to answer the questions that I have. Even though I think they won’t, because otherwise we would be over there instead of here, talking to them might give me some idea of what we should be doing with our time, as I’m certain we didn’t evolve for no reason at all.”
It’s possible we made the wrong choice. There is no way of knowing for certain. Hekate said it was the same for the first deities, as they had no idea what they were supposed to do, and it wasn’t until one of them, one of Persephone’s ancestors, stumbled across the vision pool that they realised the multiverse existed. No one who can remember that conversation was there, but, fortunately, the vision pool shows anything you might want to see, and that’s the reason they know it happened. Very few people can actually use it and Hekate has offered to let me see if there are others of us who made a different decision, as she thinks it might help me to be more certain that we did make the right choice.
When I said no she wasn’t surprised. The smile she gave me then told me that she was proud of the choice I’d made. It wasn’t necessarily the right choice, but I don’t want to know if there’s some other Papa Legba, having this conversation with another writer, only he’s telling her that they made the choice to work in the same way that the deities did. She did say there was a chance, the same as with the deities, that only one of me exists, and even then I told her that I was happier not knowing for certain.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.